Amazing Stories 1930-02 v04n11

Amazing Stories

Library - Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine Science Fiction _bleiler _noisfdb

Published: Feb 13, 1930

Magazine: Amazing Stories, February 1930

Description:

1574. EXPLORERS OF CALLISTO. 
Amazing Stories, February 1930. Ill. Morey. Short story. 
*  Time: 1967. Place: significant action on the Moon. 
*  Radio signals have been intercepted from the Moon; but this poses a problem, for the superlative viewing apparatus of the day reveal the Moon to be utterly uninhabited. The great young scientist Parsons proposes an explanation; The signals are coming from the dark side of the Moon. And Parsons intends to go there. Since he has already invented artificial gravity, inertia control, superexplosives, and various rays, it is a simple matter for him to build a small spaceship (the Meteor). 
*  Parsons and two comrades travel through space at 120,000 MPH, propelled by rockets, and move around the Moon to the dark side, where they see buildings and hostile bipeds who attack them as they land. But Parsons's weapons (which include a paralysis ray and a heat ray) are superior to those of their opponents, and the Terrestrials are in no great danger. 
*  A turning point comes when the Earthmen rescue a small running figure from two of the invaders. Back in the Meteor the rescued person is revealed to be Lola, a beautiful young woman of great artistic ability and intelligence. With a series of drawings she informsthe Earthmen that she is a deposed princess from Callisto. As her facile pencil reveals: On Callisto there are two nations, the warlike blond Anurdi and the peaceful brunet Dassans. The Anurdi have conquered the Dassans and now plan to invade Earth. 
*  There are more clashes with the Callistans, including a narrow escape from a gigantic spaceship that clutches them with magnetic force, and a space battle. But the Meteor wins through, and the comrades return to Earth to warn the nations of the impending interplanetary invasion. 
*  Miscellaneous.The most dangerous of the Callistan weapons is a yellow ray that creates heat and temporarily inhibits electrical function. The Meteor has no defense against it. 
*  For a sequel see #1577, "Callisto at War." 
  
749 A TWENTIETH CENTURY HOMUNCULUS. 
Amazing Stories, February 1930. Ill. Morey. (Reprinted in Haining, The Fantastic Pulps.) Short story. 
*  Time: 1937. Place: mostly New York and a Pacific Island. 
*  The multimillionaire and former Columbia University football star John Reiswick chances, when somewhat drunk, to hear a lecturer proclaim that in another generation or so there will be no Columbia football team. When, greatly upset, Reiswick later asks the lecturer to explain his statements, the lecturer tells him that for unknown reasons the American birthrate has fallen precipitously. On checking among his staff Reiswick finds corroborative evidence, for only one man, married to an Asian woman, has produced a child. Reiswick himself is unmarried. 
*  Casting about for a solution to the problem, Reiswick consults a maverick scientist (Hermopheles Jones) who has been working with parthenogenesis. When Jones describes the claims made by the Renaissance physician and alchemist Paracelsus for the creation of artificial men (homunculi) Reiswick agrees to support his research in that direction. Reiswick buys a Pacific island, builds a suitable plant, hires an efficient staff, and sets Jones to work. 
*  As the project gets under way, however, Reiswick falls in love with his intelligent, amiable secretary Ruth, whom he marries. Although for story reasons Reiswick does not know it, Ruth becomes pregnant and carries her child while Reiswick is in Japan negotiating a political settlement. When he returns, she has just given birth, but he is unaware of the circumstances and believes that Jones has created a parthenogenetic homunculus. Ruth finally enlightens him. 
*  At about this time it is discovered that American sterility is caused by a nutritional deficiency that is remedied by Asian food. 
*  Parabolic in nature, but sadly unconvincing even within that latitude. 

341. THE ICE MAN. 
Amazing Stories, February 1930. Ill. Lyman Anderson. Short story. 
*  The first person narrative of Marcus Publius, who has escaped from the B Insane Asylum. Originally written in Latin, his narrative has been translated by a friend. The point of the story is semisatirical comment on our civilization as seen by a Roman. 
*  The narrative: In 59 B.C., when Julius Caesar ruled Rome, Marcus volunteered to take a sleep-inducing drug and be placed in a cask of frozen oil, with the understanding that he would be awakened in a year. Actually, the cask was fished out of the sea in 1928 by Professor Emil Haskell, who revived Marcus with adrenalin. The professor held Marcus, against his wishes, in a mild captivity while he taught him English and took down detailed notes about life in Rome. Marcus, who is an extremely strong man, escaped, and after the professor's house caught on fire, incinerating the professor, was free to wander around New York with cash from the professor's wallet. 
*  Marcus comments mostly on material culture, with fear of automobiles, etc., but also falls into the clutches of a golddigging young waitress, who takes him in hand. After a riot in a speakeasy Marcus is arrested, interrogated, and put into an insane asylum. 
*  In the hands of a more skilled writer, this might have been amusing, but here it is a rather clumsy succession of banalities. 
*  An odd note, not totally relevant here, but amusing: On opening the magazine, which had been stored in a metal box for perhaps fifty years, I found handwritten sheets on which I had translated the first part of Marcus's story into Latin—undoubtedly when I was in Boston Latin School around 1936. I now marvel at how much I have forgotten! 
  
575. THE MAN FROM SPACE. 
Amazing Stories, February 1930. Ill. Wesso. Short story. 
*  The narrator, Bob, a college student, is in Professor Kepling's observatory when the man from space manifests himself. Before the man appeared, the topic of Kepling's lecture and subsequent conversation was novas, their historical observation, their sudden appearance, and their unpredictability. 
*  When the man appears, he is roughly humanoid in build, but apparently composed of a light, shining substance much different from our flesh. He shanghais Bob, his friend Jim, and Kepling aboard a remarkable glass-like spaceship, which moves away from Earth at fantastic speed. The alien makes no real attempt to communicate with the Earthmen, but as they look back at the sun, they see that it has gone nova. The Earth has been destroyed. 
*  The three men and the alien fly through space until they reach the triple star system of Almack, on a planet of which the space being lands. The planet is almost barren, but as the three move about they see horrible, mountainous forms of life—one of which is responsible for the deaths of Jim, Kepling, and the alien. Bob is now alone on the strange planet, the last Earthman. Even if he can learn to operate the starship, he has no fate but to wander alone through the universe. 
*  But then he awakens. It was all a dream. He has simply slept through one of Professor Kepling's lectures. 
*  The author appends a note: If the story is somewhat inconsistent, so are dreams. 
  
966. THE RADIO ROBBERY. 
Amazing Stories, February 1930. Ill. Morey. 
Although the second story published, perhaps the first story in the sequence about Dr. Bird and his expert doings. 
*  Place: Philadelphia. 
*  When the personnel at the Federal Reserve Bank open the vault to receive a shipment of bullion, there is a terrific explosion and the vault door is blown upon an employee, killing him. An inspection of the vault reveals that what should be bullion is only bar copper. The police arrest the bullion teller for murder, his motive robbery and sexual jealousy. 
*  Carnes, as local head of the Secret Service, on examining the premises, calls in Dr. Bird. The problem is that there is no evidence of a bomb or fumes, suggesting to both men that the explosion was caused by igniting gas—but there is no gas in the area. As a wild card in the background, however, there have been strange radio disturbances. 
*  Bird investigates, sets up a lure for the criminal, borrows Army radio directional finders, and the Secret Service pounces. 
*  The criminal is one Wallace, who had formerly worked for the Bureau of Standards and was known to Bird. Wallace had discovered a process for temporarily altering copper into the semblance of gold. He and a confederate bank guard substituted the fake gold for the real. Since the metal was not stable, Wallace disrupted it with radio waves to remove evidence. During the shootout, Wallace is killed and his apparatus self-destroyed. 
*  Carnes plays a larger part than in the other stories. One of the better stories in the series. 
  
861. VITAMINE Z.
Amazing Stories, February 1930. Ill. Morey. Short story. 
*  Reporter Paul visits his old teacher, the great Professor Beardsley, who explains his life work. Beardsley, now very old and feeble, has been working on the assumptions that the bacterial theory of disease is wrong and that all human ailments are the result of nutritional deficiencies. As he explains, he has discovered some twenty different vitamines, some of which have spectacular effects: curing rabies, typhus fever, poliomyelitis, etc. almost instantly. Beardsley demonstrates his results to Paul both in the lab and clinically. 
*  But Beardsley's greatest triumph is the isolation of vitamine Z, which, as he demonstrates on a rat, will cure senility and old age. Beardsley is just about to inject himself with vitamine Z when he keels over from a heart attack and dies instantly. The syringe with the fluid is broken, and the fluid is so volatile that analysis would have been impossible, even if the narrator had thought of it. 
*  Much superior to the previous story. 
 
1161. INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH. 
Amazing Stories, February 1930. Ill. Hugh Mackay. Short story. 
*  Place: Los Angeles and Death Valley. 
*  A strange client who looks wild and makes extravagant claims visits the office of patent attorneys Harding and Parsons. The stranger, Miller by name, points out the faults of conventional weapons and describes his invention, a device for focusing sound waves so powerful that they amount to disintegration rays. He demonstrates his invention, which is genuine enough, and suggests a large-scale test in Death Valley, where he has a small secret laboratory. 
*  The men proceed to Death Valley, where Miller rips up boulders and tears down cliffs to demonstrate the power of his device. 
*  But it gradually becomes clear that he is mad and that he intends to destroy Los Angeles. When Parsons chances to wonder whether there is a defense against the ray, Miller flies into a fury and turns on both the ray and its defense, in an attempt to kill the two men. They survive the resulting explosion, but Miller and his weapon are destroyed. 
*  Good dialogue, but a contrived ending.